


...At First Sight

by tuesdaymidnight



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes hates selfie sticks, M/M, Meet-Cute, Natasha Is a Good Bro, Winterhawk Week, ace!Natasha, probably crack fic, snipers in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-22 19:02:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4846772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesdaymidnight/pseuds/tuesdaymidnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha wants to know the story of how Bucky and Clint fell in love. Their stories are, well, a little different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Come on, Barnes. You burned the last book, and it’ll be an hour before they can get the quinjet here. Just tell me already.”

“Why are you so interested? And why don’t you just ask Clint?”

“I did ask Clint. I want your version of it. You’re hogging the blanket.” Natasha tugged on the foil blanket that she and James were sharing as they huddled around the fire.

“Why the fuck do they always send _us_ to Siberia? It’s stereotyping.”

“You’re not even Russian. It’s only stereotyping me.”

“Uh, _Winter_ Soldier here. _Red star_ on my arm.”

“Shut up and tell me how you and Barton met.”

“How can I shut up and tell--fuck! Fine. Get your knife away from my ribs and I’ll talk.”

“You really should have seen that coming. Barton’s making you soft.”

“Do you want to hear or not?” James asked as he stoked the fire. At least half the roof was still on the supposed safe house, which could only have been described as a “shack” even in its glory.

Natasha gestured for him to continue.

“So, I wasn’t officially supposed to be on the mission. Steve was the only one who trusted me--”

“I trusted you. I just couldn’t express it properly until I got the intel I needed from Stark.”

“Yes, and the bullet still lodged in my thigh remembers your improper expression of it.”

“I can’t believe you’re still mad about that--”

“If you make a joke about me being half metal, I swear, Nat.”

“Clint jokes about it all the time.”

“Yeah, well, Clint also licks my asshole until I can see through space and time.”

“I actually didn’t need to know that,” Natasha said, crinkling her nose.  

“I love how everyone thinks you’re this hyper-sexual dominatrix when in reality you’re totally squeamish about sharing bodily fluids.”

“Sex is a tool. I don’t see the recreational appeal.”

“Maybe you need Clint to rim you until you can see through space and time.”

“I’ll pass,” Natasha replied drily. “Are you going to tell me how you met or not?”

“Fine, fine. So, Steve smuggled me into Paris. Said he felt like there was something off about the intel we got. Sure enough, the scientist he was supposed to be tracking down wasn’t at the safe house. Turns out Hyrda had gotten their hands on her first. We still never caught the leak on that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Natasha said with a cough.

“Natasha Romanoff, you’ve been holding out on me.”

“Well, Steve probably wouldn’t approve of my methods, so you can’t say a word to him.”

“Kill all possible suspects and sort it out later?”

“Something like that.”

“With Hydra you can’t take chances,” James said, his voice going hollow.

“See, this is exactly why they send us to Siberia,” Natasha said, trying to lighten the slight turn in James’ mood. “So, you’re in Paris.”

“Right, yeah. So we find out where the Hydra cell is located. Of course they’re on the fucking Champs-Élysées, teeming with civilians and tourists with fucking selfie sticks at the Arc de Triomphe.”

“So that’s why Clint bought you one for Christmas.”

“They’re so stupid! So you went to the Eiffel Tower? Well, so did everybody else who ever went to Paris ever. Why do you need to document it from a terrible angle, and then plaster the result everywhere on the internet? No one cares!”

“Spoken like a true assassin lurking in the shadows.”

James rolled his eyes. “Anyway, she had two Hydra goons plastered to her. There was no way we could get her out without drawing undue attention. So we had to be delicate. I was up on the roof of some fake Baroque building all set to take them both out, so Steve could swoop in all Captain America-like and get the scientist, when an arrow whizzed past my ear. Perfect shot, impossible distance, right through both of ‘em.”

“Oh my god,” Natasha said. “I can feel your heart rate picking up. You’re getting aroused thinking about it, aren’t you? Clint’s shooting ability turns you on. I’m beginning to regret asking about this.”

James huffed. “It’s a sniper thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Uh huh,” Natasha replied.

“Anyway, Barton jumps down beside me and says, ‘You were taking too long,’ and his self-satisfied smirk was just so damn infuriating I had to wipe it off his face.”

“You punched him?”

“I kissed him.”

“Then how’d he get the black eye? I saw him the next day, and he had a black eye.”

“Run-in with a gargoyle. You know Barton.”

“A gargoyle? Like on Notre Dame?”

James shrugged. “I always liked fucking in churches.”

“That’s not an answer. But, please, don’t elaborate.”

James shrugged again, trying to play it off, but Natasha didn’t miss the small smile playing at his lips.

“So it was love at first sight then. You complete and total sap, Barnes.”

“I don’t know about all that,” James said, scrubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “Wait. I thought you said Clint already told you the story. What’d he say about it?”

“Oh, it was pretty much like that,” Natasha said with a hand wave. “Oh! Hey! I think I hear the quinjet.”

“This conversation isn’t over.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint's side of the story.

“Nat!” Clint shrieked, nearly dropping the towel that was wrapped around his waist as he grabbed his bedroom door frame to steady himself.

“Hey,” Natasha said casually, as if she hadn’t just broken into Clint’s apartment and was casually lounging on his bed flipping through a Marie Claire. Why Clint had a subscription to Marie Claire was a mystery even for The Black Widow.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Clint asked.

“What? I can’t just happen to be in the neighborhood and decide to visit my best friend. My best friend I haven’t seen in weeks, because he’s been hooking up with his teammate behind everyone’s back?”

“One, you did  _not_ just ‘happen to be’ in Bed-Stuy. Two, I saw you yesterday at Cap’s togetherness brunch. Three, we’re not just hooking up.”

“What?! Clinton Francis Barton you’ve been holding out on me. You’re  _dating_ Barnes?”

“Uh,” Clint rubbed the back of his neck, which almost made him lose the towel again. “Kind of, I mean--”

“Oh my god. You’re blushing. I never thought I’d see the day. You _love_ him.”

“You take that back! And let me put on some goddamn pants.”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before. Though, now that you mention it, nothing I want to see again. I’ll take Lucky out. You make yourself decent, and then we’re talking about this.”

“Aw, bestie, no.”

“Not an option.”

“Fine.”

Clint threw on some sweatpants, considered shaving but decided “nah,” hung up his towel, and then plopped down on his sofa and waited for Nat to return. He considered leaving out the fire escape, but with Nat it was futile. Even Murdock was terrified of Nat, and that dude woke up in more dumpsters than Clint did.

“So was it love at first sight then?” He heard her teasing voice as he was greeted with a lapful of Lucky.

Clint snorted as he scratched Lucky behind the ears..

“Yeah, no. Not even close. Who’re you talking to here.”

“So how did this start?”

“Back when you were pretending to be Team Stark.”

“You  _knew_ I was spying. It was  _our_ plan.”

“I know, I know. It was just...weird.”

Nat knew that with Clint you had to be patient, he would work circles around anything that involved talking about his feelings. She sighed internally. She would have to give a little to get a little.

“It was weird for me, too. Not being able to talk to you, having to _fight_ you.”

“I had you on the ropes.”

“Uh huh,” Natasha said as she patted Clint on the knee.

“Shut up,” Clint said.

“So that’s when you met James?”

“No, see, we didn’t meet. He was still brainwashed, and Cap was hiding him somewhere that only Sam knew about. I only heard bits and pieces of what was going on.”

“You spied on Steve?”

“Only a little. Dog Cops was in re-runs and Kate was mad at me about something.”

Natasha blinked a few times, and then shook her head. “I’m never going undercover again.”

“Jesus, Nat. I don’t need a minder.”

“Actually, you do. Hmm...”

“What? What’s that ‘Hmm’ about?”

“Nothing, so you were stalking Steve.”

“It wasn’t stalking. No one would tell me anything! And then once they unbrainwashed the Winter Soldier, suddenly everything’s ‘Bucky this’ and ‘Bucky that’, and we started getting decent intel again and Captain America seemed to only want to work with his best friend--”

“You were jealous? Oh my god. You were jealous because Captain America liked James more than he liked you.”

“That’s not…”

“That’s exactly what it is. You were jealous of a man who was brainwashed and tortured by Hydra for 70 years, who Steve thought was dead and had to mourn twice. You were jealous when the only connection Steve had to not being Captain America came back and--”

“Hey, hey,” Clint interrupted as he gave Natasha a playful shove. “It sounds petty when you put it that way. I wasn’t jealous. I was bored. Cap could have used me more is all.”

“Uh huh.”

Clint scowled. “ _Anyway_ , the two of them went on this mission to Paris to rescue one of SHIELD’s neurologists, and it ended up with a siege in the middle of Paris. And you know how Steve is--no finesse--so it was a good thing I was there. I followed Mr. Hair up to--”

“You were jealous of his hair, too?”

“Stop putting words into my mouth. I wasn’t jealous. He has nice hair. He likes having it pulled, too. Like, really, _really_ likes it.”

“I don’t need to know this.”

“Like a direct nerve line to his dick.”

“Clint!” Natasha said, punching him in the leg.

“Ow. Fine, fine. So there was the Winter Soldier with a rifle pointing at a cafe and two Hydra agents. There’s no way he could take out both in time for the second one not to react. He’s good, but he’s not that good.”

“So you had to show off to try to win Steve’s admiration.”

Clint glared at Natasha. “So, I take the shot--perfectly, of course--even under distracting conditions.”

“Distracting conditions?”

“I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed Bucky’s ass, but it’s a work of art. And when he was bent over looking through his scope.”

“So it was love at first sight.”

“Love of his ass maybe.”

“So then what?”

Clint shrugged. “We had a lot of sex.”

“How did you taking his shot lead to sex?”

“It’s a sniper thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

“So you fucked your way into a relationship.”

“Pretty much. I mean, it turns out that he kind of gets me.”

Nat noted the small smile on Clint’s face, but decided she had pushed him about it far enough.

“Wait. You had a black eye the next day. How’d that happen?”

“Huh?” Clint said, the look of confusion on his face genuine. “Oh, I don’t know. Anyway, he’s in Bulgaria and won’t be back until tomorrow. Wanna order a pizza?”

“You’re hopeless, Barton.”

“Was that a ‘yes’?”

“Of course it was a yes.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [tumblr](http://tuesdaymidnight.tumblr.com) or [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/tuesdaymidnight) and we can cry about Sebastian Stan together.


End file.
